the united states, england and europe. and so the president ordered them built in 1940, but the navy, um, decided that that was probably not a good idea. so they convinced the president that the scarce resources that were available at that time would be better spent on destroyers. and i think that if you look at the historical record, you'll see that that probably was a mistake. the destroyer escort is sort of a novel type of vessel. it's smaller than a destroyer, um, around 300 feet. and it had a shorter turning radius so that it could, it could essentially turn on a dime compared to a destroyer. so what they did is they escorted the convoys across the atlantic, and the convoys consisted of troop ships and supply ships for the war effort. but if they, if they made contact with a u-boat, they could break off, and then they could pursue that u-boat. when you look at the record, though, i mean, 70 u-boats, they probably were, without question, the most successful antisubmarine vessel in the fleet. this ship is the uss slater. it was built in the tampa shipyard. there were 563 destroyer esc
